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Archive for July, 2013

July Update

July 30th, 2013 at 02:06 pm

Current YTD networth increase is 64.63%. Which almost matches last year's total networth increase. I also suspect this will be the last year we increase our networth over this amount given the size of that hurdle from now on. After this year, I suspect that shooting for 50% will be ambitious...

The last credit card payment is scheduled for August.

The first extra payment went to my student loan and now I am waiting to see if they will take the auto debit as well. I think they will but we shall see. They do have a feature that when I am ready to pay in full, so long as I tell them what day I plan to make the payment, they will tell me the total final payment.

Slow 401(k) deposit.

July 28th, 2013 at 07:18 pm

It took almost 2 weeks for them to deposit my 401k money from my last paycheck. As in it showed up the day before my next paycheck. They have always taken their sweet time with depositing but that it ridiculous. They must mail the deposit or something because otherwise, how would you even get a delay? There is no rhyme or reason to when it gets put in either. I have had same day and multiple days later deposits.

I wonder how long it will take them with the paycheck I just got...

Course, the only reason I know all this is thanks to Mint. Ah the joys of seeing everything on the daily basis, you learn all the little things you never knew before but are now so obnoxious.

Going to start chipping away at student loan

July 18th, 2013 at 03:02 pm

The last credit card payment is scheduled for August so I have begun sending extra payments to the student loan this month. $500 extra per month just makes the 2 large payments later a little less massive.

Thanks to the purchase of the road bikes, our summer spending has been very low, close to winter levels. We are too busy biking to spend money. Another month like this and the bikes will have paid for themselves in reduced spending.

Did the math and the car loan is not going to get paid off this year, it will have to wait till the end of next year as originally planned. It sets back too many of my other goals for 2014. You would think that freeing up the monthly payment would be beneficial but it just doesn't pay back quickly enough to justify it. Too many things need to be funded in spring 2014. Ah well, I knew it didn't make financial sense but it would have been nice.

Temptation - Do I or Don't I?

July 16th, 2013 at 02:01 pm

Despite the variability in our income, I am pretty good at projecting it out. I have reached the point where I know by December we will have enough to pay the car loan in full. If I do, one of the Roths will need to be funded in the beginning of 2014 instead of December 2013.

The benefit is that a payment of $409 would immediately disappear. Its the last of my non-mortgage debt (come December). The con is that it delays building the EF and delays putting money in the Roth.

Really it doesn't matter tremendously either way. It is more a psychological victory than anything. It would certainly fit with the theme of 2013 as debt payoff year.

On the other hand, I am wondering what I have against saving up cash. This would not be the first time I delayed building a more robust EF (we have a small one built in to the budget already) in order to payoff low interest debt. Maybe I just really hate monthly payments, hmmm... I seem to have no problem saving to retirement accounts so its not that I can't save money.

I do think a part of it is that I like a simple budget and I like seeing big changes quickly. A car loan disappearing and then being able to save up more money quickly just works for me.

I figure I will probably debate it for a little bit and see how I feel come December.

Reviewed a friend's budget

July 15th, 2013 at 01:37 pm

She wasn't in as bad a shape as I was expecting, only needed to drop her necessities percentage by 14% and move that money to savings. She is no longer spending more than she makes though its still pretty close.

The jaw drop of the night was when I asked her what she was saving for in her extra savings account. I kid you not the answer was "Because you told me to". I explained what an EF was and that we were going to give her a goal of 3 months worth of expenses. We are also starting her on a baby step of turning on monthly contributions to her retirement accounts (the only reason she has one is again, I told her so but I already knew that one).

Since Mint actually tracks both of these goals, it will keep her aware that she needs to keep those items in mind. I think in a couple more years she will be in a pretty good place. Maybe one of these days I will even convince her to pay off her car loan before buying the next car. For now, I consider it a victory that her budget is net positive.

Halfway through the year

July 10th, 2013 at 02:40 pm

Since the end of June gives me a nice clean set of data for 6 months, it makes it easy to track where we are headed for the year.

Yearly spending with debt payments is $68k, $20k worth has been dedicated to debt or other payments that won't outlive this December. Another $18k in spending services debt that will be around at least one more year (read mortgage and car loan). There is something disturbing about spending more on debt payoff than actual spending but we have been making large payoffs of our debt so not too surprising.

We have only 2 more months before the credit card is wiped out so August is the final payment. We already have less credit card debt than at any other point since college.

Our networth increased 52.47% YTD as of end of June so we are still on track with that as well.

I revised our expected income up this year. Even though this is our first year breaking the 6 figure mark, we will surpass that by a decent amount. In fact, barring layoffs or job changes, DH will probably break that barrier all on his own.